


night

by laureljay



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-13
Packaged: 2019-07-11 17:05:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15976688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laureljay/pseuds/laureljay
Summary: "Dewey!" There's nothing else for it; she chases him.Dewey takes after his mom.





	night

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt by the lovely queenbean3.

There are plenty of things that leaving Earth for ten years will screw up, Della’s found. Her family dynamic, for one; for another, her circadian rhythm. She finds herself passing out in the middle of the day and wide awake long after the rest of the manor has gone to bed.

 

She wanders up and down the hallways, letting her feet take her where they will. Autopilot, she thinks, and feels a hysterical laugh swelling in her chest. She swallows it down; she’s not a big fan of silence, but that’s no excuse to wake up the house. Instead she trails her left hand along the wall as she walks and focuses on the way her fingertips buzz as she rubs them against the rough paneling. She used to do this when they got home after long trips, to help it sink in that she was home. She doesn’t think it works so well anymore.

 

She’s near the boys’ room, she realizes, and stops short. Their door is open just a crack. She wants to go in, kiss the tops of their heads. She wants to gather them up in her arms and just hold them until they all fall asleep in a pile and wake up with sore necks from leaning on each other’s shoulders. Della takes a step forward.

 

But none of that would happen. They’d be mad that she woke them up, but they’d tolerate her for a few minutes and then one of them – when she pictures it, it’s Dewey, who she knows is having a hard time adjusting to her presence – would wriggle away and curl up in his own bunk and pretend to fall back asleep until she left. She stops again.

 

She’s not going to bother them, she decides. She’ll just check on them. That’s something mothers do.

 

Della slept in this room, once; she still remembers how much pressure to put on the door to swing it open near-silently. The dim light from the hallway doesn’t give her a lot of detail as she peeks in, but it’s enough to make out shapes. The room is a mess, but she can’t make out what’s strewn across the floor. Clothes, most likely, or toys. As she looks around, she can see Huey and Louie in their beds, still except for the soft rise and fall of their breathing.

 

Della used to think that people who talked about how adorable and perfect their children were didn’t mean it. They were saying it to boost their kids’ self-esteem or stroke their own egos. But her kids are perfect. That’s probably egotistical anyway, considering they all favor her over any of the people who could have been their father, but it’s true so she doesn’t feel like a hypocrite over it.

 

One of them is snoring; Della feels a pang of guilt that she doesn’t know who. Then it occurs to her that she can only see the two of them. She squints, stares at Dewey’s bed for nearly thirty seconds – but he’s not in it.

 

She steps back, out of the doorway, and leans back against the wall. Tries to rationalize it. Maybe he’s in the bathroom, maybe he wanted a midnight snack, maybe he has trouble sleeping too and they’re wandering in opposite circuits around the mansion. She starts walking again, faster than before, trying to make a mental list of all the places he might be. She tells herself she’s being paranoid, that Donald’s finally gotten through to her, won’t he be proud of himself. She carefully ignores the chill that starts to run from the nape of her neck down the length of her spine.

 

As she makes her way down a side staircase, she hears soft footsteps and an odd dragging sound. She gets to the first-floor landing, turns the corner and has to duck back around because there’s Dewey, dragging an overstuffed duffel bag behind him. Every few steps, he glances around like he’s expecting to be caught. He’s wearing a heavy sweater; it’s a cold night, but the mansion is warm, and she can’t comprehend why he needs it.

 

“Dewey?” she calls softly, taking a half step around the corner. Dewey freezes when he sees her – and then he’s gone, the bag abandoned on the floor as he dashes down the hallway. “Dewey!” There’s nothing else for it; she chases him. She has to hop over the bag – which is spilling over with clothes and bags of chips, a detail she can’t process – as she follows him through the manor.

 

He’s fast, and good at running _from_ things. Even as she curses under her breath, Della’s impressed when she almost loses him around a sudden turn. An inherited talent or a learned one, she doesn’t know. Then she notices a flicker of movement against the wall in one of the older sitting rooms. He’s gone again before she can grab him, heading for the foyer. There’s a near-audible click in her mind as the sweater and the bag suddenly make sense, and she practically tackles him to the ground a few feet from the front doors.

 

She’s sure there was something in the parenting book Donald gave her all those years ago about when, if ever, it’s appropriate to tackle one’s children. It probably said _never, what’s wrong with you_ , but she didn’t actually read it so it’s anybody’s guess, really.

 

She scoops him up and nearly gets hit in the face, he’s fighting her so hard. He’s heavy, but she’s strong, and she throws him over her shoulder and fireman-carries him into the TV room. He protests, _put me down leave me alone lemme go_ , but she just walks him over to the sofa. Dewey punches her shoulder blade so hard that she gasps, and he goes still right away. The severity of what he’s doing seems to bowl him over at the same time it does her.

 

Della takes a deep breath. Deliberately, evenly, she says, “If I put you down, will you just sit there for a minute and stop with the prison-break stuff?”

 

He mumbles, “Okay,” and she dumps him onto the sofa. He curls up with his knees against his chest, looking livid, but all he says is a meek “please don’t tell Uncle Donald.”

 

“Well, at least you’ve got your priorities straight.” Della sits down next to him, careful to give him a few inches of space. “What were you trying to do?”

 

He doesn’t answer. Picks at a loose thread on his shirt. “Hey,” she says. “ _Hey_. Look at me, buddy.”

 

“I’m not your buddy,” he snaps, and pointedly looks down at his feet.

 

“Okay. You don’t have to be friendly. But you do have to tell me what’s going on, unless you’d rather explain it to your uncle.” It’s a dirty move, but Della knows it’s going to work. “Where were you trying to go at three o’clock in the morning?”

 

Dewey’s quiet for a moment. “The bus station,” he admits.

 

“The bus station,” Della repeats numbly. “And what did you think you were gonna do when you got there? Buy a ticket up the coast and go live in the woods?” She can imagine him sitting in the station as the sun rises, terrified but too stubborn to give up and go home. That’s a mindset she knows, that it doesn’t matter what else happens as long as you do what you set out to do.

 

“I was thinking south,” he says sheepishly. “Uncle Donald’s got a couple friends from the Navy.” Della wonders if they’re thinking of the same people; if they are, then there’s a lot Donald hasn’t told the kids, because ‘Navy friends’ doesn’t even begin to cut it. “I don’t need a plan anyway. I’ll improvise.”

 

“Boy,” Della mutters, “you really are my kid, aren’t you.” The way he scowls at that doesn’t bother her, it doesn’t. She struggles to find the words to ask the next question; she wishes she’d woken up Donald, wishes she had someone who knew what to do. “What’s so terrible here that you need to run away from it? Did you have a fight with your brothers?”

 

Dewey shakes his head. He’s still not looking at her.

 

“Is it me?”

 

“No. Yes. I don’t know.” He rests his forehead on his knees with a wordless sound of frustration. “Nothing feels right anymore.”

 

That. Well, it doesn’t feel good. “I know it’s been hard to adjust to having me around,” she begins, but Dewey cuts her off.

 

“I shouldn’t _have_ to adjust! You’re my mom!” He throws his hands up in a helpless gesture. “It’s supposed to be easy. We’re supposed to love each other.”

 

The implications of that hang in the air for a moment, and neither of them speaks, though Della recognizes that it’s her turn to say something.

 

“It’s okay, Dewey, it’s okay,” she says, but she hears her voice breaking. “We only met a couple weeks ago. You don’t have to love me already. Or ever.” A pause, as she wipes her face on her sleeve. When she looks up again, Dewey is looking back at her for the first time tonight, and he’s blinking back tears too. “I was so scared I wouldn’t be a good mom. I figured even if I didn’t come back it would be okay, because Donald would take better care of you than I could. I messed up, baby. I know. I’m sorry.”

 

Slowly, gingerly, Della reaches a hand out to him. He stares at it – then throws his arms around her waist and hugs her like he’s trying to keep her from floating away. She holds him close, afraid that if she hugs him too tightly she’ll crush him. “Please don’t go anywhere,” she whispers.

 

Dewey sniffles into her shirt, “You, too.”

 

They just stay there on the sofa – it smells like Pep, which she’s pretty sure is Louie’s favorite – as Dewey stops crying, and his breathing evens out. She doesn’t know how long it takes for him to fall asleep, but he does, with his head in her lap.

 

About ten seconds after she notices he’s asleep, she goes to blink and when she opens her eyes sunlight is pouring through the window and Donald is standing in front of them, looking puzzled.

 

“Della? What happened? Why’s Dewey out of bed?” he asks. His voice is low, but it’s enough to wake Dewey, who sits up so fast he almost smacks his head into Della’s.

 

“Uncle Donald!” he says, all groggy smiles and nervous energy. “Hi, uh, good morning. Me and Mom were just—” he stammers, clearly not ready with an excuse. Della gives him a look that she hopes he understands as _I got this_.

 

“Hey, Don. Nothing’s wrong, don’t worry. I let Dewey stay up a little late so we could watch TV together. I guess we fell asleep.”

 

Donald frowns, but he seems to accept her explanation. “I don’t like them to watch TV after midnight,” he reprimands her. To Dewey he says, “What did you watch, buddy?”

 

She opens her mouth to make something up, but Dewey seems to have woken up enough to fib for himself. “We watched old episodes of _Darkwing Duck_.”

 

“Yeah. I watched it a lot before they hatched, do you remember?” she asks Donald.

 

“I remember,” he laughs. “I thought it was one of those things like pickles and ice cream. Speaking of which, there’s breakfast if you’re hungry.”

 

“Breakfast sounds good to me,” Della says. She gets up and follows Donald to the kitchen, Dewey walking beside her. He grabs her hand and squeezes it and she squeezes back and they don’t let go.

**Author's Note:**

> we sure like our angst around here, don't we?


End file.
